The Fatal Attraction of the Language of Developmental Psychology in Child-Rearing

Abstract

In this chapter, we will focus on how the language of developmental psychology shapes our conceptualizations and understandings of child-rearing and of the parent-child relationship. First, we will show how developmental psychology, in Burman’s succinct phrasing, “both contributes to and reflects” normative assumptions about parenthood and upbringing, “both in structuring research agendas and in informing practice” (Burman, E. Deconstructing developmental psychology. Routledge, East Sussex, 2008, p. 117). We will do so by analyzing recent prominent research and popular literature on parenting and policies on parent support, in both the UK and Flanders. Second, we will address the ways in which developmental psychology in the area of parenting and upbringing holds a particular attraction in our current cultural context. In a post-Enlightenment society, the traditional frameworks through which humans face and understand their existential condition are increasingly undermined by uncertainty and doubt. Drawing on the work of (amongst others) Zygmunt Bauman, we will show how developmental psychology is one of the instruments that contribute to breaking down our existential condition into a series of well-defined, and thus apparently manageable, tasks and categories. In so doing, it displaces rather than confronts the possibly limitless depth of the enormity of the reality of ‘being a parent’.